MISS PEREGRINE'S HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN, Ransom Riggs

Yay, I managed to meet my “probably in April” deadline! For a review that’s seven months past relevance (when the film adaptation hit theaters). Actually, no. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children will have relevance well after people have forgotten the Tim Burton version, banished to the same memory cupboard as Dark Shadows and Alice Through the Looking Glass. The novel itself is five years older than its film counterpart, but thanks to its two sequels, there’s more meat to eventually dive into. So, where does this grand adventure populated by remarkable and somewhat frightening children begin?

Florida.

Well, if you need to start in a non-magical place full of its own peculiarities, might as well be Florida.

In truth, Ransom Riggs’ opening falls in line with the impulse of many fantasy writers setting up ordinary heroes before entering the extraordinary world. That is, his version of Florida is, for the most part, benignly mundane. Sort of a shame. I mean, where are all the alligators? Instead, we get right to Jake Portman, the teenage protagonist. He’s going about a typical day at a job he doesn’t want, living with a family that doesn’t appreciate or understand him. A familiar beginning, but let’s proceed.

While Jake is a shy, retiring boy with next to no friends, he’s not exactly on Harry Potter levels of deprived. In fact, his background is closer to Batman’s. His family has accrued wealth from a prolific franchise of pharmacy stores. Jake works at one despite his half-hearted attempts to get fired. His one friend proves that Jake isn’t a total social outcast, but his most meaningful relationship is with his Jewish-Polish grandfather Abe.

For years, Abe has been telling stories of his childhood as a refugee on Cairnholm, a Welsh island, during WWII. He was sent to Cairnholm by his parents to escape the Nazi invasion. He’s collected photographs to corroborate the stories about children he lived with who had supernal abilities or physical attributes. In a brilliant stroke, Riggs includes corresponding real-world photos in the book, blurring the line between reality and fantasy, which Jake and the reader alike later traverse. Jake believes these stories wholeheartedly until other people tell him that such children can’t exist. As he matures, he doubts the photographs and even guesses at how they could’ve been faked. As he does, the reader is likely to find themselves looking for the evidence of chicanery in the photos, too.

Neither the strange photos nor strange characters hold a candle to the book’s greatest oddity: its shifting tone. The first third keeps to a realistic setting as Jake deals with his lost faith and the murder of his grandfather. Sure, his grandfather is gruesomely disemboweled, and Jake thinks a humanoid tentacle monster did the trick. Jake’s family and psychiatrist convince him that the “imagined” monster is a coping mechanism after witnessing an animal attack. It’s a reasonable explanation that Jake tries to latch on to. Things take an uncanny turn, however, when Jake eventually realizes that all the incredible stories his grandfather told were true. Riggs does try to transition Jake and the reader from the regular world to the world of the peculiars via the surreal geography and isolation of Cairnholm, but the jump pulled me out of the story. Imagine a Christmas movie where a character learns to accept that Santa Claus isn’t real. Such an arc would resonate with many of us since, as we grow up, we’re forced to shed fairytale-esque perceptions of the world for a harsher, magicless one. Except, surprise, the crazy, fantastical beliefs of childhood are factually true! Warning: narrative whiplash in progress.

Riggs does hint at the hidden presence of peculiars beyond the photographs, and he adds dark elements to raise serious stakes so that the fantasy menaces are as dangerous as any real-world threat. Still, the beginning chapters make a sincere effort to convince Jake and the readers that peculiar children and tentacle monsters aren’t real, only to backpedal with pseudo-biology and timey-wimey concepts that are a little too ridiculous to mesh with the well-grounded introduction. Compare this approach to other fantasy authors. J.K. Rowling gives us a glimpse into the wizarding world, like when Vernon Dursley confoundedly witnesses the celebrations of Voldemort’s defeat, even before Harry learns the truth of his heritage. C.S. Lewis distances the Pevensie children from the Great War before he brings them into Narnia, so the somewhat whimsical countryside haunted by the shadow of war mirrors the whimsical, wintry landscape haunted by the shadow of the White Witch. The protagonists do encounter people who try to tell them the magical world isn’t real (Harry and the Dursleys, Lucy and her older siblings), but the children have substantial reason to believe in it (Harry talks to a snake; Lucy talks to a faun). The dramatic irony smooths out any wrinkles in the transition to the magical world. The readers of Miss Peregrine have no solid foothold on what’s real and what isn’t until Jake meets the peculiar children almost halfway through. It’s not a huge flaw, and perhaps Riggs thought uncertainty would be more interesting, but I’m not sure the tone shift had the dramatic impact it was going for. I did some double-takes and waited for the story to turn into a psychological thriller about a young man convinced that mutant children are real when in fact he’s losing his mind.

On the upside, Jake engages in some enjoyable sleuthing through Grandpa Abe’s past when he finds a letter from Miss Peregrine. Still, the fantasy elements that probably got most people to pick up this book don’t kick in until well after Jake has arrived on Cairnholm. Jake is disappointed to find that the house Abe lived in is bombed out. Local story goes that no one except for Abe survived, which seems to explain Abe’s fascination with the “peculiar” children. Jake shows his perseverance even in the face of a likely dead end. Further investigation into the wrecked building finally brings about contact with the peculiars. Jake ends up running into a cairn and coming out the other side in a different era: Cairnholm more than seventy years ago. Cue the Doctor Who theme!

For those who are reading this review and have only seen the movie version, be warned that when we’re introduced to Emma Bloom, Jake’s eventual love interest, she’s not the soft-spoken, feather-light ingenue in the film. No, book!Emma is the fire-wielding, fire-tempered girl who nearly shanks Jake when she first meets him! While she’s a little grating with her gruff attitude, we soon learn why she’s so wary. She’s afraid that Jake is a wight, a creature that hunts peculiars and employs hollows, aka the love-children of Cthulhu and the Demogorgon. Even when Jake shows he’s too freaked out to be a threat, she treats him like a prisoner. Her companions, invisible boy Millard and strong-girl Bronwen, think he’s harmless. Also, Emma is pissed when Jake reveals that he’s Abe’s grandson, i.e. the grandson of the boy she once crushed on. Nevertheless, after some kerfuffle in town with paranoid townsfolk, the children take Jake to the now restored house.

While there are still questions to answer, such as the origins of peculiars, the dangers they face, and Emma’s relationship with Abe (and whether it’s sort of creepy or SUPER CREEPY for her and Jake to develop feelings for each other), the story is no longer a realistic murder mystery. It becomes the fish-out-of-water, regular-person-meets-supernatural-world tale you were expecting when you opened to page one. Then it becomes a you-were-special-all-along story—hello again, Potter! And Neo, Arthur, Buffy, the kid from Sky High, and toooo many characters to name. We’re flung into and fully submerged in classic fantasy tropes. So, again, forgive my poor reader brain for flailing from this sharp veer on the story’s road.

Jake’s surprise reveal as a peculiar himself motivates him to stay with the children (what, not because it’s just cool to have super-powered friends?). On top of that, the time loop he enters through the cairn lets the children relive the same day over and over without being bombed out. The pros: immortality and a haven from a hostile outside world. The con: if the children leave the loop for a prolonged visit, they will age rapidly and die to “catch up” with the current timeline. Also, regular people can’t enter the loop. These circumstances make it next to impossible for Jake to explain himself to anyone on the outside, including his father (too busy watching birds, anyway).

Riggs has a tricky balancing act going on. On one side of the narrative, Miss Peregrine—a time-controlling, bird-shifting peculiar—fills in Jake on the history of peculiars. In other words, info-dumping. But the info-dump is paired with some character growth as Jake forms relationships with a few of the children. Being in this fantastic world is enough of a draw to stay at Miss Peregrine’s home even without knowing he’s technically one of them. On the other side, figuratively and literally, Jake deals with rapper boys and a self-involved father whose poor relationship with Grandpa Abe has clearly impacted his inability to connect with Jake. Weirdly dry "no-maj" scenes are offset by expectedly weird superpower friendships and romance. The two could work in tandem if we had equal reasons to be invested with the normal world and the peculiar world. Unfortunately, each time Jake returns to the modern day and his dad, it’s like returning to Kansas from Oz without the “there’s no place like home” vibe.

The problem is that Jake doesn’t have much to go back to at home. His parents, while caring enough to put him in therapy after Abe’s death, are too self-centered to have an engaging and loving relationship with him. The only friend he has at the story’s start abandons him. What’s the conflict, then? Is Jake just scared about embracing this new world? It is dangerous with those tentacle-mouthed Slendermen around, but he develops a more meaningful connection with the peculiars than anyone else (who’s currently alive) and learns to face the dangers. The choice to join the peculiars seems like a no-brainer. Yet to have Jake up and leave his family doesn’t sit right in the real-world emotional spectrum. He’s not escaping a toxic environment, just a barren one. His family could’ve been more intolerable so that Jake’s departure would be imperative. Or, his relationships with his parents could’ve been more layered and compelling so that palpable tension could exist. As the story stands, the stakes over leaving, even without saying goodbye to his mother across the ocean, are pretty meh.

The ending also borders on anti-climactic. The escalating peril delivers thrills and serves to expand Jake’s role among the peculiars, going from a friend and potential boyfriend to a protector. Miss Peregrine is rendered indisposed, so the children must make their way from the home they’ve depended on for so long to an unknown future, armed with a long-shot plan to find other peculiars and stop the creatures and enemies that hunt them. You can tell it’s the ending of a chapter or volume rather than a complete novel. Again, not a deal-breaking flaw, and it might compel you to start the next book, The Hollow City, but I honestly haven’t done so yet. To lend some closure to his dilemma over leaving his family, Jake does drop off a note for his father before he commits to staying in the 1940s with his new friends. It may be worth anticipating a family reunion.

Once again to those who’ve seen the movie, the screenwriters understood how understated and somewhat unsatisfying the book’s finale is, so they (possibly) pulled material from the sequels. Or they pulled a climactic battle and ending out of their asses. The dock fight was probably the latter. (Please don’t eat my eyeballs if I’m wrong, Miss Peregrine fans. But come on!) That said, the movie also tried to bulk up Jake’s relationship with his father just enough that there was more poignancy in Jake’s departure, along with stronger evidence that Jake will meet his family again. Which ending is better? In terms of matching the overall tone (the first jarring shift notwithstanding), the book’s somber, daunting close brings us back to the fact that, whether fighting monsters or good-old-fashioned bad people, Jake has an immense challenge before him, but he might have what it takes to face it. The movie tries to complete Jake’s heroic arc with a final fight that’s just . . . silly. So I favor the book. If you haven’t seen the film or read the book, maybe see the movie first. There are some interesting differences, not just goofy or illogical ones, to compare against Riggs’ original vision. The book still deserves a look if you enjoy young characters with amazing powers struggling to survive and don’t mind the weird genre jump from psychological mystery to dark fantasy.

Rating: 3/5